In the Land of the Free

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton [spoke] yesterday at a Conference on Internet Freedom held at the Hague, a conference devoted to making “a stand for freedom of expression on the internet, especially on behalf of cyber dissidents and bloggers.” Clinton has been flamboyantly parading around for awhile now as the planet’s leading protector of Internet freedom; yesterday she condemned multiple countries for assaulting this freedom and along the way actually managed to keep a straight face.

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She astutely observed that “those who push these plans [ for the internet that “undermine its fundamental characteristics”] often do so in the name of security.” She added that “the first challenge is for the private sector to embrace its role in protecting internet freedom,” which — she lamented — has not always happened: “A few years ago, the headlines were about companies turning over sensitive information about political dissidents. Earlier this year, they were about a company shutting down the social networking accounts of activists in the midst of a political debate.” She concluded with a real flourish: “Our government will continue to work very hard to get around every barrier that repressive governments put up” even though such governments will try to maintain those barriers “by resorting to greater oppression.”

What Hillary Clinton is condemning here is exactly that which not only the administration in which she serves, but also she herself, has done in one of the most important Internet freedom cases of the last decade: WikiLeaks.

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First, let us recall that many of WikiLeaks’ disclosures over the last 18 months have directly involved improprieties, bad acts and even illegalities on the part of Clinton’s own State Department. [Please read this article for enumeration.]

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What has the U.S. Government done in response to these newsworthy Internet revelations? It launched what The Sydney Morning Herald this week – citing classified Australian diplomatic cables – described as “an ‘unprecedented’ US government criminal investigation”: “‘unprecedented both in its scale and nature.” It has convened a Grand Jury to criminally investigate WikiLeaks — for nothing more than doing what newspapers routinely do: publishing newsworthy classified information received from sources.

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Meanwhile, Clinton’s State Department warned international relations students that they had better not discuss, link to or even read the cables — which were making news all over the world — or else they’d jeopardize their ability to work in government. The White House warned government employees not to even look at those documents online — even though the world’s largest newspapers were publishing them — and threatened that they would be breaking the law if they did. The State Department instructed its employees that all of those documents, published all over the world, must still be treated as secret. The Obama administration then blocked Internet access to those documents for hundreds of thousands of federal employees, even having the Library of Congress — one of the world’s largest libraries — install blocks to ensure that nobody could use library computers to read those documents.

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Beyond WikiLeaks, the Obama administration (following in the footsteps of Saudi Arabia) is seeking “a new federal law forcing Internet e-mail, instant-messaging, and other communication providers offering encryption to build in backdoors for law enforcement surveillance.” [...]The Chairwoman of the Democratic Party, Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, is sponsoring a bill under which “Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers’ activities for one year.”

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Perhaps worst of all, many of the administration’s key allies in the Senate are now pushing a bill – in the name of stopping online piracy (SOPA) — that would vest the U.S. government and the largest corporations with draconian powers literally to shut down or otherwise disable Internet sites without due process. [...] As EFF’s Trevor Timm recently wrote: “Ironically, we know from the WikiLeaks cables that the State Department has also aggressively lobbied many other countries for strict new laws similar to SOPA. They have even offered to fund enforcement and literally draft the laws that sacrifice free speech for greater copyright protection for Hollywood.”

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So let’s review Secretary Clinton’s list of grave threats to Internet freedom and see how it applies to her actions and those of the Obama administration. “Those around the world whose words are now censored . . . who are blocked from accessing entire categories of internet content” – check. Attempting to undermine the Internet’s ability to “enliven public debates, quench a thirst for knowledge” – check. “Ideas are blocked, information deleted, conversations stifled, and people constrained in their choices” – check. “Companies turning over sensitive information about political dissidents” and “a company shutting down the social networking accounts of activists in the midst of a political debate” — check. ”Those who push these plans often do so in the name of security” – big check.

   Glenn Greenwald

But thank heavens we don’t live in one of those countries that seeks to undermine the internet.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: There's more.

WASHINGTON — A bill aimed at choking off US exports of technology used for Internet surveillance or censorship was introduced in the House of Representatives on Thursday.

“It’s unconscionable that US technology is putting democracy activists at risk,” said Representative Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey who is behind the Global Online Freedom Act.

“US companies should not, knowingly or unwittingly, be providing the technology used by repressive regimes to hunt down and punish human rights activists. .

  Raw Story